Hey there, I am fairly new to the system. I try to participate by reviewing and rating wayfarer poi recommendations. And 90% of my reviews I get are hiking signs stapled to a tree. Here in Germany you get one of those every few hundred meter on a trail. Are these acceptable as wayfarer poi? I think it’s okay for official starts if hiking trails, and other poi on the trail to become pokestops, etc. But not every single sign. Do I kill my review rating by declining those?
Thanks.
Welcome to the forum! We have lots of folks here who will be able to help with those nominations specifically, but I can point you to a clarification about trails and markers: Trails & Markers
I will leave specific comments to others.
Hi @So3ck
Willkommen im Forum 
Ich tagge @HikeLadyLDK. Sie ist Spezialistin für deutsche Wanderwege und wird dir eine qualifizierte Antwort geben können.
Als kurzes Statement kann ich schon mal sagen: es kommt auf die zu erwartende Route an und nicht auf die Markierungsart.
Danke. Ich habe bereits einen anderen Post zum Thema gefunden, und der Konsens scheint zu sein das es wohl in Ordnung ist alle paar hundert Meter einen Stop einzurichten.
Persönlich finde ich das etwas viel, aber wenn es die akzeptierten Regeln sind dann passt das wohl.
Alles klar. Komm gerne wieder, wenn du Fragen oder diskutieren möchtest.
You have skip option if you are unsure
Yes, this is acceptable from what I know (had multiple of those reviewed by staff here in the Forums, and I myself do regulary submit them and get them accepted.)
You understood well that Hike trails are acceptable wayspots. Many don’t, and I think it’s great to ask this question here.
Hike trail signs are considered permanent and are good Anchorpoints for Wayspots. just like Signs of a Playground. So theres no issue in having those.
Also Hike Trails are very long structures, it would be quite odd to only have one on the starting point and end point of the trail wich could be dozens or hundreds of kilometres apart.
In my opinion, it also makes for a great play experience to have multiple Wayspots on a Hike Trail so you can anjoy a hike and play Pokemon Go enjoyably.
Furthermore, Hike trails are great for rural Areas to have Play Areas that encourage excercise in groups and have a good amount of Wayspots.
Niantic has never after Hiketrails were included stated officially how many there can be on a Hike trail, but from their Forum responses and Community discussion here in the Forums, it seems that a wayspot every 200 metres for the same trail is a good rule of thumb, while theres no definitve max or min amount of Wayspots a Hike trail can have.
So does that mean every Hike trail sign is an Auto-Yes? No, it doesn’t.
Does the trail have some kind of recreational value (like beeing a one-day-trip to a touristic destination and back) or is it just public infrastructure? Is the trail reconizeable on the sign (specific trail signs should be proven with a Link) so it can be verified that this an actual sign of a hike trail, and, if in an Area without streetview or if the sign isn’t visible there for some reason) a Map of the Hike trail wich can prove that the trail leads along the assignet wayspot position. I include that every time for safety.
When it comes to rating, I say they’re still “hit and miss”, but more recently the majority of them comes back accepted, so when it comes to rating, I’d assume you would get more disagreements than agreements by rejecting those. By the rules of Niantic as far as I understand them, they’re absolutely safe to accept, and get accepted in 95% of cases by the appeals team. So I reccomend to accept them for as long as you can verify as described.
Also, when reviewing always try to stick the criteria and use you best knowledge and judgement.
For gathering, it can be helpful to gather infos on the Forums and talk to other wayfinders.
I don’t advise to decide on your assumption of how the community might decide on a wayspot, but on your own judgement and knowledge. That leads to good results for me all the way and is what i was recommended to do from the start by the people who brought me into wayfarer.
Edit: Didn’t see you already got your answer, anyways, im keeping this here for anyone who might be interested 
That’s an interesting thing to hear. I submit hiking trail markers/stickers/poles almost everyday now in The Netherlands. Let’s just say that most are defenitely not even 50Meters apart from each other, but as you mentioned, it makes for a great play area.
There’s absolutely no consensus about “every few hundred meters”. Each nomination should be viewed based on its own merits of criteria regardless of distance, whether that may be 5 meters from a different marker or 200 meters.
I dont know what gives you this impression, but theres absolutely no criteria that backs this up.
It has been stated several times above that this is not “criteria” but a rule of thumb from wayfarers that are not wanting to flood an area with the same type of poi.
There is no rule stating that we must nominate every viable poi we see.
Nobody above has stated that closer than 200 metre pois should be rejected just a “Rule of Thumb” that if a trail has them every 5 metre you dont have to nominate them all.
Some people may think that and review and sumbit that way, but that’s not a consensus or a rule of thumb.
This is especially concerning because a distance “rule of thumb” was mentioned on another post recently, too: Multiple Wayspots for a single playground: West Park, London W3 - #5 by TheDoctorBird
There isn’t a distance rule for Wayspots.
Ah another discussion about this…
I think i should simply exclude this from my posts in the future, as it’s no official ruling.
So you are all right: That’s not an official ruling. It can be ignored.
If there are lot of markers in the same area than they might be considered not distinct. Markers at “decision points” are good ones, i.e. where the trail might turn. Repeater markers I would advise every couple of hundred metres apart so can see the next one on the scanner and use whichever game you are playing as a wayfinder. I have voted to rejected repeater signs too close to other ones on the basis that they’re not disticnt.
To the original question - the best trail markers have the name of the trail, are made from some durable material in good condition and have some evidence to show that they exist and are significant (photosphere, link to some resource with a map, OpenStreetMap etc). You don’t have to have ALL of those to be accepted, but that’s the best case scenario.
I personally won’t vote for plain old directional markers or public rights of way signs unless there’s some evidence of a trail.
There is zero basis for rejecting based on distance. Every trail marker that helps guide you along the hiking trail is eligible. There is some explanation about nodes on bike routes that I did not understand, but it is not about distance between the markers.
“Not distinct”
“Not distinct” is a very broad thing. Are they really not distinct just because they’re close to one another? I have doubts. I would judge differently on this. Each of those markers has a function on its own, wich is to mark the path on this point and allow people to follow it conviniently without a Map or something alike.
100-200 metres is, in my book(!), a good rule of thumb for a marker of the same trail, and even closer seems to be well acceptable too. Theres no official ruling in this, but from the decisions of the appeals team and also from the actions of Niantic here in the Forums, i’m pretty confident to say there is no real distance rule, and definitely no “you should see the next marker somehwere on the edge of the map” ruling. Theres actually not even a base to say, that trail markers need to be so far away from each other, quite the opposite.
Also: Trail markers on decision points might be 10/10, that doesnt say they’re the only acceptable ones. As we no longer give star ratings, theyre just as acceptable as markers on streches of the path, as those also have an important function: They allow you to recognize when you might have missed a crossing or find your path when markers on decision points are missing due to vandalism or beeing overgrown temporarily. Theres no rules that make the one eligible and not the other.
Also the condition of the Marker, as we no longer vote by stars, but by thumbs up/down, has no impact. It should be recongizeable, and beautiful, prisitne condition, markers are certainly a plus, but having a worn oput marker that is recognizeable is no less a thumbs up than a marker in pristine condition.
Of course you are right to not vote for just directional markers with no trail attached, but those are a different thing from trail markers entirely and just sometimes get mistaken for those (like regular bike lane markers vs touristical bike routes).
In my opinion, hike trails with repeaded markers make for excellent play Areas that encourage hiking with friends while playing Niantic games, therefore I don’t think beeing too strict when it comes to distance is a good thing. But I am one of those people who doesn’t think beeing more strict than Niantic requires us to be does any good. People should have their wayspots as long as they’re inside the rules of niantic. It’s not my mission to make it as hard as possible to get a wayspot through, my personal mission in wayfarer is to map out cool places and trails so people can enjoy the game in a pleasant surrounding with interesting things to explore as good as possible.
Agree with @HikeLadyLDK on this
If I saw repeater signs on a straight path every 10m, I wouldn’t submit all of them (plus what a waste of trail resources!) But at decision points and every few hundred metres along a route seems reasonable to me as it helps us navigate the trail and serves as a check that we didnt go wrong somewhere along the way! I certainly wouldn’t want to walk a trail that only has markers every few km as I would worry what if I went wrong?! So for PoIs I think a similar common sense way of looking at it works.
I like to talk about what people will see on this section of the trail in my nominations, and find it helps them to be accepted when I do. But when reviewing I will use my own judgement to decide if I think they made a good case for it and am minded to approve as I believe trails and their markers help us to exercise and explore
Absolutely agree on this one
Well said